---
title: Consensus
sidebar_label: Consensus 
description: Overview of the Sui consensus.
---

The basic purpose of consensus in blockchains is to agree on a consistent order and ensure the availability of transactions.

On Sui, consensus has a simple API: validators submit different user transactions to consensus concurrently, and the consensus outputs a consistent stream of transactions across all well-behaving validators.

Byzantine-fault tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols are a rich area of research. The next-generation consensus engine set to roll out in Sui is based on the **Mysticeti** protocol.
The protocol optimizes for both low latency and high throughput because:
- It allows multiple validators to propose blocks in parallel, utilizing the full bandwidth of the network and providing censorship resistance. These are features of the DAG-based consensus protocols.
- It takes only three rounds of messages to commit blocks from the DAGs, same as pBFT and matches the theoretical minimum.
- The commit rule allows voting and certifying leaders on blocks in parallel, further reducing the median and tail latencies.
- The commit rule also tolerates unavailable leaders without significantly increasing the commit latencies.

For more details including correctness proofs, the [Mysticeti paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.14821) is the best source.
